‘The Housemaid’ Movie Review: Twisty-Turny Thriller Is A Lot Of Trashy Popcorn Fun
Photo from Lionsgate
From Jeremy Kibler
Prudes need not apply when it comes to The Housemaid, the latest entry in the unofficial subgenre of Hot People With Secrets Thriller™️. Based on Freida McFadden’s 2022 best-seller (the first in a series), this is a slick page-turner in film form and a reprieve from the prestige of awards season. Director Paul Feig knows exactly what kind of movie he was making, operating in that same sexy, twisty-turny, female-driven vein as A Simple Favor with gorgeous people being bad but not completely losing his comedy background (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy). Leaning into the trashier and more deranged elements of such material, The Housemaid is best—and highly entertaining—when it’s being a proudly R-rated crowd-pleaser unafraid to waver into camp.
Sydney “Gen Z’s Nancy Allen” Sweeney stars as Millie, a young woman with a mysterious past that has her currently living in her car and regularly seeing a probation officer. With a résumé that makes her look overqualified for the position, she nails an interview as a live-in housemaid for the well-to-do Winchester family, hitting it off with cheery, airy wife and mother Nina (Amanda Seyfried). She begins right away, moving into a nice-enough room in the Long Island family’s attic (which we know can’t actually be nice because the only window doesn’t open and there’s a bolt lock on the outside of the door). Nina’s husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) is also too handsome and charming, and their daughter Cece (Indiana Elle) is a piece of work who never misses an opportunity to give side-eye to the new housemaid. Of course, nothing is what it seems, as Nina’s friendly hospitality turns into wild mood swings, throwing tantrums and gaslighting Millie again and again. Whatever you assume is going on becomes even more diabolical.
For mystery readers and watchers, The Housemaid might seem a little derivative at the onset—could this be another The Hand That Rocks the Cradle situation?—but it’s still rather devious in how it plays with audience expectations. The screenplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine is tight in its structure, with most plot points and details usually all accounted for once everything clicks into place. As the layers of the proverbial onion get peeled back, first impressions inevitably change. Whom we should be rooting for is initially challenged via Millie’s voice-over (perhaps too much of it) but then later confirmed.
Sydney Sweeney does play the titular role with an unforthcoming, doe-eyed sensuality, and she gets to surprise with more complexity as the story unfolds, but Amanda Seyfried gets to make an indelibly meal out of playing the ready-to-crack Nina Winchester. It’s one of the film’s showier performances, if not the showiest, and proves Seyfried can fearlessly command every emotion and color in her paintbox. Having made an impression in both It Ends with Us and even more so in Drop, Brandon Sklenar is also quite effective as Andrew, who has to be a heartthrob with more behind the curtain for any of the plot mechanics to work. Michele Morrone (Another Simple Favor) is merely a plot device, but at least he’s a hunky plot device as glowering groundskeeper Enzo. A bleach-blonde Elizabeth Perkins deserves some sort of scene-stealing award, as she devours every limited minute of screen time she has as Andrew’s ice-cold mother.
Slyly funny when it wants to be and increasingly pulpy as it goes along, this is one sudsy potboiler that goes to some surprisingly disturbing places in the last half-hour. Director Feig gets a lot of mileage out of the manicured production design and volume-speaking costume design, but none of it would land without an expert balance in tone and the right performers who can take out the trash with sincerity. While the film fares less convincingly as a female empowerment tale, The Housemaid is the popcorniest of popcorn thrillers that makes you want a refill.
Rating: 3.5/5
The Housemaid hits theaters on December 19, 2025.
